FARM BUREAU BLAMES ROAD PLAN DEMISE ON POLITICS

Politics paved the way for the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission to scrap the 15-year highway plan, Missouri Farm Bureau officials said Monday.

The Farm Bureau accused Missouri Department of Transportation officials of replacing the 15-year plan for road and bridge projects with a five-year, $4.2 billion plan that puts more money into urban projects.

The commission scrapped the 15-year plan last month, six years after lawmakers approved a phased-in, 6-cent increase in the fuel tax to help fund road and bridge improvements. MoDOT officials said the funding was flawed and its timetable unachievable.

J.T. Yarnell, who assists the department's director as chief engineer, said Monday that his agency's analysis showed there wasn't enough money to pay for all the projects.

But Farm Bureau officials said the real culprit was politics and state government's desire to scrap the highway plan established in 1992 during the administration of then-governor John Ashcroft.

Farm Bureau officials said the 15-year plan was ditched by a highway commission whose members were all appointed by Gov. Mel Carnahan.

"The road between the rhetoric we have heard from MoDOT and the action it has taken is filled with potholes of misleading information, unsubstantiated claims and shrouded efforts to dramatically shift the state's spending priorities," Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse said.

Kruse spoke at the Farm Bureau's annual meeting at Osage Beach. About 1,600 members of the Farm Bureau attended.

Kruse said the hallmark of the 15-year plan was the commitment to fairly distribute highway funds by building roads and bridges where the needs were documented by the state's traffic counts.

"The evidence is compelling to support the conclusion the 15-year highway and bridge plan did not fail due to lack of funding but was scrapped due to blatant political maneuvering over where highway funds would be spent," Kruse said.

According to MoDOT, rural projects would have received 59 percent of the funding under the original highway plan. Projects in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas would have received 41 percent of the funding.

Under the new five-year plan, 50 percent of the money would go to rural projects and the other half would fund projects in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, MoDOT officials have said.

Estil Fretwell, director of public affairs for the Farm Bureau, said the 15-year plan includes almost $2 billion in federal highway funds that go directly to the metropolitan planning organizations in St. Louis and Kansas City.

That money isn't accounted for by MoDOT in its analysis of the 15-year plan even though it is being spent on urban projects in that plan, Fretwell said. "Not recognizing it simply allows St. Louis and Kansas City to double dip," he said.

While the Farm Bureau is still reviewing the new highway plan, Fretwell said it appears some of the rural highway districts in the state will receive less money percentagewise than they would have under the old plan. Some rural districts may have had their funding cut by almost 50 percent, he said.

But MoDOT's Yarnell said rural projects received 67 percent of the funding from 1992 to 1995, well above the rural-urban split projected for the entire 15-year plan.

He said the highway commission ordered the new 50-50 split when it adopted the five-year plan last month. Yarnell said the percentage could change beyond the fifth year, depending on the actions of the highway commission.

The increased funding for St. Louis and Kansas City areas includes more money for road and bridge maintenance work, he said.

Yarnell said politics isn't at the foundation of MoDOT's transportation plans. "The recommendations were not made for political reasons," he said.

Chris Sifford, Carnahan's spokesman, said the 15-year plan was flawed from the start. "It is difficult to hang onto something that is fatally flawed," he said.

But Farm Bureau officials estimated the state would receive more highway money than was projected when the original road plan was adopted in 1992. They said $1 billion more in state highway taxes would be collected and Missouri's share of federal highway taxes would increase by 50 percent or about $1.3 billion more than originally budgeted.

Maintenance costs will be about $600 million less than originally budgeted, Fretwell said.

But Yarnell said the Farm Bureau analysis fails to take into account the increased cost of transportation projects. The actual cost of highway projects has exceeded the expenses projected in the 15-year plan, he said. From the start, the plan had more projects than revenue, Yarnell said.

The highway commission has said the price tag for completing the 15-year plan would be an extra $19 billion, well above the plan's original price tag of $14 billion.

Yarnell defended the five-year plan. "We think it is a very sound plan. We think it continues the general objectives of the 15-year plan."